Leaded Gas, CFCs, and the Dark Side of Progress (hackaday.com) 184
szczys writes: Leaded Gas did a great job of keeping engines from knocking thanks to tetra-ethyl lead. Unfortunately the fumes from the chemical are highly poisonous. R-12 is a refrigerant that revolutionized the cold storage of vaccines. It turned out to be the first of the chlorofluorocarbons which are well known (and now banned) for damaging the environment. Both are the creations of one inventor: Thomas Migley, Jr. Two deadly inventions seem like more than enough for one person, but his story ends with a third. Stricken with Polio, he invented a system to help him get in and out of bed on his own. A tragic accident ended his life when he was caught and strangled by the system he created.
No need to read TFA (Score:3)
The wikipedia has the quote (Score:5, Interesting)
Wikipedia has the most interesting quote about him in his article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org].
' J. R. McNeill, an environmental historian, opines that Midgley "had more impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth's history." '
Anyway, it's always been a bit of an unfair slam. Leaded gasoline only became an issue when the car number went from the 7.5 million that were around when TEL was being made, to the over 100 million that were around the time that leaded ramped down in the mid 70s. The miles driven per person were also way lower back then- because most people had to get around without a car, everything was set up for that. If you had it to do all over again, you'd probably STILL use leaded gasoline until about 1955 or so. However, at least everyone knew lead was bad for you back then- not so with Freon's very hard to verify environmental impact, which wasn't understood for a lot longer.
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If you had it to do all over again, you'd probably STILL use leaded gasoline until about 1955 or so.
No, no, I wouldn't. There was a conference in 1925 about how dangerous it was. They came to the wrong conclusion.
Re:The wikipedia has the quote (Score:5, Informative)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead#History_of_controversy_and_phase-out
There are numerous citations in the first paragraph that you can follow and browse at your leisure.
Re:The wikipedia has the quote (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The wikipedia has the quote (Score:5, Informative)
If I recall correctly, the signs of lead being dangerous were there, but like the cigarette industry decades later, the companies invested in leaded gasoline fought tooth and nail to keep everyone believing lead was harmless. They would actively try to discredit and defund anyone who said otherwise and put all their political weight towards squashing any legislation that might question their official platform.
Obviously, they weren't ultimately successful is keeping "lead is dangerous" suppressed forever, but they did delay any action to mitigate the effects (and profited off said delay).
Re:The wikipedia has the quote (Score:4, Informative)
You recall correctly.
The scientist who first noticed that lead from car pollution was actually contaminating the environment was smeared by car and gas companies. I think Cosmos has an episode about it.
Re:The wikipedia has the quote (Score:5, Informative)
Cosmos did have almost an entire episode (or a big part of it) devoted to this. This guy was doing research on determining the age of rocks and ran into problems when he wanted to created a lead-free lab environment. One thing led to another and he figured out lead was everywhere because of the leaded gas. From there, he realized this thing was making us sick and fought a long hard fight to bring this to the public. His R&D was directly or indirectly funded by the oil industry which promptly pulled his funding. He was a poster child for following the data and designing great tests to make the data drive conclusive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clair_Cameron_Patterson#Campaign_against_lead_poisoning
Re:The wikipedia has the quote (Score:5, Interesting)
citation needed.
i have citations that say the opposite
This in no way "says the opposite". In fact it reinforces the point that some people (like the good people at Amoco) chose a safer (and probably more costly) means of increasing the octane rating. The rest of the industry just kept pushing the cheap toxic lead solution.
Interestingly as late as 1983 it was a personal priority for Reagan's first EPA head, Anne Gorsuch Burford [nytimes.com], to try to remove all caps on lead content in gasoline, at at time that the evidence of harm was staggering.
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uhh, bullshit, the anti-knock agents are needed to get a reasonable efficiency out of the engine. See, engine efficiency is strongly affected by compression ratio, and the higher the compression ratio, the more likely the engine is to knock. Hence, high-performance car engines (not your sedan or pickup) need higher octane fuels. These, of course, have crap in them to retard the speed of the flame front, and at the time, TEL was the only commercially viable product. so then we got MTBE, which we also found
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...TEL was the only commercially viable product.
Tell that to Amoco, which never leaded its premium grade gasoline. [wikipedia.org]
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Ethanol is not "food". While the US may be wasting corn on it, most of the world isn't that stupid. (The US has "too much" corn, and can afford to be stupid with it.)
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So short term greed, results in interesting tit bits like this "A 1994 study had indicated that the concentration of lead in the blood of the U.S. population had dropped 78% from 1976 to 1991". So prior to that we were blithely creating the lead head generations and tea baggers and a massive crime wave. The greater the exposure the more likely they are to be crazy Gopers. How many people ended up dying as a result of that greed, that went on to fuel sic even more greed driven stupidity. The lead might be d
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TEL was added to enhance the anti-knock characteristics, it had *absolutely nothing* to do with metallurgy. As it turned out, it worked as an effective solid lubricant but that was an aside.
WWII may have been lost, or at least would have been greatly extended, if airplane engine performance was limited to fuels without TEL.
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And here we are today with most small piston aircraft still using almost identical engines, still burning leaded gasoline. So called "100LL" (low lead) contains more lead than car gas ever did.
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. High compression gives better thermodynamic efficiency, but higher temperatures (and due to that, increases NOX emissions). No metallurgy will fix knocking - it ruins engines no matter what you make them out of, and wastes energy by pushing on a piston that is still on the upstroke.
Those of us who live in far
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That's pretty unlikely, seeing how they're long dead.
Didn't they know from the get go (Score:2)
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There are machining techniques that can be used to reduce the propensity for premature detonation too, but they require time to be spent removing the hard edges on the dishes on the pistons and in the head chambers, or using other metal like aluminum in the head, or some combination thereof. It's possible to get 10:1 compression without knock sensors on pump gas.
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All depends on which pumps.
Alcohol is the cure for this (and every other) problem.
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Well the ozone hole is still there, so I'd have to say the jury is still out on R12.
Re:The wikipedia has the quote (Score:4, Informative)
> Can someone point to the anything in the environment today that still shows signs of damage from leaded gasoline?
Depends- possibly people. There's a few competing theories as to why violent crime fell so sharply, and one of them has to do with the sudden lack of lead exposure, especially in places with high traffic and reasonably low ventilation- cities.
Getting rid of leaded gasoline was a very needed and necessary thing- or rather, cutting it back dramatically was.
When cars went from relatively uncommon to extremely common, increasing by an order of magnitude, at the same time that miles driven per person year went way up, the lead went from some kind of rounding error to a problem of moderate seriousness, and it probably still has some effects today. If it had been shitcanned in the 50s, that would probably have been averted, and by then engine tech had had enough time to progress too. But once it was enshrined in practice it took a long time to weed out, as the other comments have pointed out.
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You mean besides the human beings who, as a result of heavy childhood exposure, grew up to be more violent, more impulsive, more aggressive, and less intelligent?
Sure. Lead emitted from cars settle onto the ground, and kind of just sits there. It doesn't biodegrade, it's not soluble enough to wash away especially easily, and it's heavy enough to stay where it lands -- until organisms like us end up ingesting and sequestering it, and that seems to take a LONG time, much longer than the 20-odd years since it
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You mean besides the human beings who, as a result of heavy childhood exposure, grew up to be more violent, more impulsive, more aggressive, and less intelligent?
That's a big problem, but not really "long term environmental damage". It's not something that will be seen in the environment in the future.
Sure. Lead emitted from cars settle onto the ground, and kind of just sits there. It doesn't biodegrade, it's not soluble enough to wash away especially easily, and it's heavy enough to stay where it lands -- until organisms like us end up ingesting and sequestering it, and that seems to take a LONG time, much longer than the 20-odd years since it was banned in the US.
I don't have time this afternoon to look up numbers, but as I recall, you'll still find highly elevated levels of lead in surface soil near highways that saw a lot of traffic during the leaded-gas era. I don't expect the US to pony up a few trillion bucks to remediate all that soil any time soon.
That's "long term". Is it "environmental damage"? Lead in the soil that causes no measurable effects can't really be said to cause persistent measurable "damage".
The point is that the environment seems to have largely recovered from leaded gasoline (hasn't it?). The environment is resilient.
Aviation Gas is still leaded (Score:5, Interesting)
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Small airports next to elementary schools are probably creating future violent criminals.
That depends. Main small engine aircraft now use unleaded avgas instead of the leaded variety.
Re:Aviation Gas is still leaded (Score:5, Informative)
Wrong. They use 100LL, for "low lead", which isn't really low at all. All standard small-engine aircraft use this fuel, unless it's some "experimental" aircraft with a Subaru automotive engine or something.
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You, of course, are correct. I should have said low lead, since 100LL is 1/2 the lead of 100/130. There are viable replacements for 100LL in the US (already approved in other countries). It just seems the US doesn't want to let them be adopted for wide spread use here. For instance, we looked at testing other fuel samples for our fleet and received, by mistake a load of 91/96 (the brown military fuel) and it actually worked quite well. Why it isn't normally available, I have no clue. Unfortunately, we ha
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UnLeaded Gas (Score:2, Insightful)
This article sparked the memory of wondering why we had to pay more for unleaded gas... Apparently it was expensive to remove the naturally occurring lead from the refined gasoline.
Oh, wait . . .
Re:UnLeaded Gas (Score:5, Informative)
This article sparked the memory of wondering why we had to pay more for unleaded gas... Apparently it was expensive to remove the naturally occurring lead from the refined gasoline.
because instead of lead, they had to add other chemicals to raise octane ratings to reduce knocking. Those chemicals cost more.
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And/Or blends with more valuable (rare) distillates. TEL, MTBE, etc. are chemical hacks to prevent the lower grade compounds from igniting and burning as readily.
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This article sparked the memory of wondering why we had to pay more for unleaded gas... Apparently it was expensive to remove the naturally occurring lead from the refined gasoline.
because instead of lead, they had to add other chemicals to raise octane ratings to reduce knocking. Those chemicals cost more.
In addition to costing more, some of them (like MBTE) were arguably worse for the environment... Damn you CARB (California air resources board)...
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instead of lead, they had to add other chemicals to raise octane ratings to reduce knocking. Those chemicals cost more.
Some of them also had other issues - like being toxic in other ways, or causing other problems.
MTBE (the first big tetraethyl lead replacement), for instance, has leaked out of storage tanks and contaminated ground water. It produces a foul taste in microgram concentrations, so even if it turns out not to be hazardous, a little can make a lot of ground water undrinkable. There are claims
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This article sparked the memory of wondering why we had to pay more for unleaded gas... Apparently it was expensive to remove the naturally occurring lead from the refined gasoline.
Oh, wait . . .
The real reason you had to pay extra for unleaded gas is that there was no alternative. The lead was added to the gas, it never had to be removed from it.
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There were always alternatives, just that they were uneconomical. Petrol has always been a blend of products. You could run a car just fine on a single petrol component, but as is the usual with this sort of thing that single component was also the most expensive to make. Two key petrol components are often referred to as liquid gold in refining because their ideal properties allow refiners to fix any stuffed up petrol blend simply by adding more, and also because they are very costly to make; alkylate, and
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Not sure your point here. The amount of naturally occurring lead in gasoline is nearly immeasurable - if there was lead in gas it would quickly make inoperable the catalytic converters in modern cars.
Reagan Crime Wave caused by lead (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Reagan Crime Wave caused by lead (Score:5, Insightful)
The vast majority of high quality correlations are also causations. Sometimes a common cause for both can confuse matters, but in the vast majority of cases you can trust a correlation to be a causation. This is not true if the correlation was either falsified or just not there in the first place, obviously. The causation can also go in the opposite direction of what you expect, but it seems unlikely that falling crime leads to the banning of leaded petrol.
The correlation between phasing out leaded petrol and falling crime holds in many countries which banned lead at different times. It is highly unlikely that some other cause happened at the right time in all the countries.
The causality itself is also quite uncontroversial: It is known that exposure to lead means lower average IQ, and lower average IQ means more violence.
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I'm not arguing the point (because I agree on this one), but your post reminded me of Spurious Correlations [tylervigen.com].
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That site reinforces my point. Its examples of correlations suffer from way too few data points, and even then most of the correlations have a really lousy r-value.
I have never seen a high quality spurious correlation without fraud or misuse of statistics being involved. The lectures you can find on correlation vs. causation use horrible ones that wouldn't survive 5 minutes of scrutiny.
If correlation does not equal causation, why can't someone find a good counter-example?
Re:Reagan Crime Wave caused by lead (Score:5, Interesting)
The vast majority of high quality correlations are also causations. Sometimes a common cause for both can confuse matters, but in the vast majority of cases you can trust a correlation to be a causation.
That is ABSOLUTELY false.
I mean, seriously -- just think about what you said for a minute. There is an insanely large number of possible datasets in the world. And if you can match up any dataset with any other dataset, you'll have a similarly insanely large number of high correlations that just happen by random chance.
That vast majority of such "correlations" are absolutely meaningless.
If we take your statement to be true, we'd have to conclude that most of the correlations "discovered" here [tylervigen.com] are likely to be causal: US spending on science causes suicides by suffocation (or the reverse, r=0.9979), per capita margarine consumption causes variations in the divorce rate in Maine (r=0.9926), annual number of drownings by falling out of a fishing boat causes the marriage rate in Kentucky to go up and down (r=0.95), per capita consumption of mozzarella cheese causes more civil engineering doctorates to be awarded (r=0.96), etc., etc.
The correlation between phasing out leaded petrol and falling crime holds in many countries which banned lead at different times. It is highly unlikely that some other cause happened at the right time in all the countries.
See, now you're starting to get there. When we can track a correlation and match it up with the cause in time or using some other variable which influences both, the causality likelihood starts to increase.
The causality itself is also quite uncontroversial: It is known that exposure to lead means lower average IQ, and lower average IQ means more violence.
And now we get even further along -- the causality mechanism might actually make sense.
I'm NOT arguing against this particular theory, by the way. I'm just pointing out that your assertion that the "vast majority" of "high quality" correlations imply causation is ridiculous. If you just allow any dataset to be matched with any other dataset in the world, the vast majority of correlations will be stupid random nonsense. That's the reason the "p-hacking" is a useless statistical practice that will inevitably result in false relationships.
It's only when you start tracking other variables related to the correlation and establish likely causality through other reasonable mechanisms and data in other variables that you can start proving something.
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I'm NOT arguing against this particular theory, by the way. I'm just pointing out that your assertion that the "vast majority" of "high quality" correlations imply causation is ridiculous.
It could also be that 'high quality' is a different standard to him than a simple high r value. As he mentions, the correlation not only holds a high r value at a macro level, but when you start going micro - looking at individual states and and times, the correlation is still there. I remember that they tracked the beginning of the crime spikes as well. So the same time delay was valid from the start of use of TEL, adjusted for amounts, and crime spiking, and the same delay from the cessation of use and
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It could also be that 'high quality' is a different standard to him than a simple high r value. As he mentions, the correlation not only holds a high r value at a macro level, but when you start going micro - looking at individual states and and times, the correlation is still there. I remember that they tracked the beginning of the crime spikes as well. So the same time delay was valid from the start of use of TEL, adjusted for amounts, and crime spiking, and the same delay from the cessation of use and crime dropping.
I think you missed the part of my post when I said I was NOT questioning this particular association. Let's try again: I AGREE WITH THE IDEA THAT LEAD AND CRIME SEEM TO BE CAUSALLY RELATED HISTORICALLY.
My argument was about the general assertion that the "vast majority" of "high quality" possible correlations that might exist in the universe are causal. No matter how "high quality" your standard is, I guarantee you that this statement is false. From a practical standpoint, there are an infinite number
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There are 10 data points in most of those. They are not high quality correlations. Give me something with a few hundred data points at least.
And yes, everything Firethorn wrote.
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There are 10 data points in most of those. They are not high quality correlations. Give me something with a few hundred data points at least.
You completely miss the point. Those "correlations" are jokes, of course. The point is that you can choose an arbitrarily high threshold, and you can always find random correlations to meet it. There's just too much possible data in the universe.
Think about it this way. Take a million random datasets. You could easily generate a million sets of data from all sorts of everyday measurements or combinations of measurements. Heck, you could even just generate a million RANDOM datasets. If you check cor
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I'm NOT arguing against this particular theory, by the way.
I actually agree with this theory. I disagree with the general assertion that the "vast majority" of correlations are also causal. That's just statistical poppycock.
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Is the evidence good enough for anyone to sue for damages?
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That would seem pretty simple to test. All you have to do is look at the IQ scores over time (controlling for changing difficulty of the tests). If your hypothesis is correct, then the rate at which IQ scores were increasing should have increased after the 1970s when leaded gasoline was phased out.
A quick Google search turns out that the rate at which I
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As long as you ignore that the vaccination rates and violence or autism rates don't correlate particularly well.
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The correlation of reduced lead in the environment and reduced violent behavior is a lot more plausible, and a lot more testable.
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Is there a dark side (Score:4, Interesting)
to the improvement of life for millions of people? Tetraethyl lead is a small speedbump on the road to a bright future of advanced chemistry. The global car industry is a marvel. The tree huggers need to bugger off. What Henry Ford said one hundred years ago ring s truer than ever today.
"I will build a motor car for the great multitude...constructed of the best materials, by the best men to be hired, after the simplest designs that modern engineering can devise...so low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one-and enjoy with his family the blessing of hours of pleasure in God's great open spaces."
Henry Ford.
Re:Is there a dark side (Score:5, Funny)
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to the improvement of life for millions of people? Tetraethyl lead is a small speedbump on the road to a bright future of advanced chemistry. The global car industry is a marvel. The tree huggers need to bugger off. What Henry Ford said one hundred years ago ring s truer than ever today.
Except that it was the tree huggers who wanted to remove lead from gas for all of the environmental and health reasons. What actually caused the lead to be removed had nothing to do with that. It was the EPA requirement that cars have a catalytic converter to meet emission standards ultimately got rid of leaded fuels since lead ruins the catalytic converter.
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to the improvement of life for millions of people? Tetraethyl lead is a small speedbump on the road to a bright future of advanced chemistry. The global car industry is a marvel. The tree huggers need to bugger off. What Henry Ford said one hundred years ago ring s truer than ever today.
Except that it was the tree huggers who wanted to remove lead from gas for all of the environmental and health reasons. What actually caused the lead to be removed had nothing to do with that. It was the EPA requirement that cars have a catalytic converter to meet emission standards ultimately got rid of leaded fuels since lead ruins the catalytic converter.
You're splitting hairs now - the "tree huggers" would also be responsible for the drive to reduce emissions via catalytic converters. The EPA exists as a result of pressure, it didn't just spring up out of nowhere.
How about smog? (Score:2)
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You know what else Henry Ford is quoted as having said?
"I know who caused the war (World War I)...the German-Jewish bankers! I have the evidence here. Facts! I can't give out the facts now, because I haven't got them all yet, but I'll have them soon."
Just sayin', it not like we should blindly accept every pearl of wisdom that dropped off ol' HF's lips or anything.
ah, scientists (Score:4, Insightful)
You should remember that Thomas Migley was foremost a scientist, and quite representative of the hubris and single-mindedness of scientists. When he advocated for the safety of leaded gasoline, he wasn't lying for financial gain, he was doing so because he believed it. The scientists protecting you from ozone holes or lead or snake oil are indistinguishable from the scientists that create the ozone holes or leaded gasoline in the first place, or the scientists that create better cancer treatments; it's only in hindsight that you know who was right.
So, when scientists tell you how to live your life or tell you that the science is settled and you should just do what they tell you, just remember how this guy died: A tragic accident ended his life when he was caught and strangled by the system he created.
Re:ah, scientists (Score:5, Insightful)
Cautionary note here, kids - scientists and especially engineers (the applications guys) are in the business of pushing the envelope, so mistakes are inherent in the process. Whether it is building a longer bridge (Tacoma Narrows) or making a nonflammable refrigerant (CFCs), you take your best shot with what you know at the time. This includes coders, which is why we keep finding security holes in critical software systems. There is no solution, it's in the nature of the "progress" game, but we can try to be objective about finding faults and not hang onto dangerous technologies just because of ego.
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variation on the 'science was wrong before' myth.
0/10 points.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/S... [rationalwiki.org]
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Back off, man. I'm a scientist.
Actually, if you read TFA.... (Score:5, Interesting)
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...he was indeed lying for financial gain
[citation needed].
There are some truly great doctors out there who for the longest time chain-smoked their way through life even as their colleagues were dropping from various cancers. It is quite possible to believe something and not have a financial tooth in the game. He was a scientist and an engineer. He did a lot of work for corporations. He wasn't getting rich of either invention, his employers were.
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Midgeley was a research scientist working for an employer. His "financial gain" was limited to salary, bonuses, promotions, and stock options. That's the same motivation most scientists on this planet have.
He thought he had inhaled too much of the stuff in the lab and needed to give his lungs a bit of time to recover, that's all. If anything, the relatively mild symptoms he had in response to working
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So, when scientists tell you how to live your life or tell you that the science is settled and you should just do what they tell you, just remember how this guy died: A tragic accident ended his life when he was caught and strangled by the system he created.
Okay. And after I've remembered it, then what? Ignore all science because this one guy was hoist with his own mechanism? Or listen to all science, but just bear in mind that future information might contradict it? Or should I toss a coin for each bit of science I hear?
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I said that you shouldn't listen to scientists tell you how to live your life or tell you that the science is settled and you should just do what they tell you. That is a statement not about science, but about scientists talking about things outside their area of expertise. My point is that scienti
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How about you learn how to apply the scientific method yourself, then stop believing everything some jackass in a white coat tells you.
Yes absolutely, we must all personally verify all science. That is a totally workable system.
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When he advocated for the safety of leaded gasoline, he wasn't lying for financial gain, he was doing so because he believed it. The scientists protecting you from ozone holes or lead or snake oil are indistinguishable from the scientists that create the ozone holes or leaded gasoline in the first place, or the scientists that create better cancer treatments; it's only in hindsight that you know who was right.
When he was advocating the safety of leaded gasoline, that almost certainly wasn't science. It would even back then have been easy to see that. You can very well know who was or is right without hindsight.
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The scientific community gave him awards for his work, and the federal government and their expert panels determined that there wasn't sufficient evidence for harm in order to ban lead. So, in different words, the scientific experts at the time disagree with you.
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the scientific experts at the time disagree with you
But they obviously didn't do the science. Scientific experts can say what they want but if they didn't research it, you'd better be skeptical.
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So, when scientists tell you how to live your life or tell you that the science is settled and you should just do what they tell you,
When the science is settled though - when the vast majority of research is all pointing in one direction, don't ignore it just because it's something you don't want to face. Your freedom is not absolute, other people have to live on this planet with you.
The scientists are totally distinguishable over time, the method converges on truth.
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I agree. And that convergence usually takes around a century. So, for, oh, say, climate models from 2015, we can consider the settled science in about 2115, after plenty of verification and observation.
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"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."
- Max Planck
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Planck is saying that many scientists are so narrow minded that they need to die before a new theory can be accepted, a pretty damning statement. He doesn't say that the next generation necessarily gets it right.
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You should remember that Thomas Migley was foremost a scientist, and quite representative of the hubris and single-mindedness of scientists. When he advocated for the safety of leaded gasoline, he wasn't lying for financial gain, he was doing so because he believed it. The scientists protecting you from ozone holes or lead or snake oil are indistinguishable from the scientists that create the ozone holes or leaded gasoline in the first place, or the scientists that create better cancer treatments; it's only in hindsight that you know who was right.
So, when scientists tell you how to live your life or tell you that the science is settled and you should just do what they tell you, just remember how this guy died: A tragic accident ended his life when he was caught and strangled by the system he created.
Although potentially generally true in abstract, in the case of Mr. Midgley, he was definitely advocating leaded gasoline for *profit*.
The TEL (tetra-ethyl-lead) anti-knock additive was patentable (the use and manufacturing techniques), where the other leading additive contender ethanol was most certainly not patentable. Mr. Midgley may or may not have believed that TEL was "safe-enough", but he and his boss Charles Kettering basically minted GM a small fortune as part of it's 50% stake in the Ethyl Corpora
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Midgley was employed by an employer, he received rewards from his employer, he filed patents, and he beat the drum for his inventions. If his patents made his employers money, he likely got bonuses and possibly stock. The more his inventions were noticed by others, the more citations and scientific rewards he received, as well as research grants. That is exactly how the vast
"and no banned"? (Score:2)
(and no banned)
Do some bloody editing, someone, please.
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Oh, and you managed to spell his name wrong as well. It's Midgley, not Migley.
"Fair and Balanced" (Score:2)
R-12 is a refrigerant that revolutionized the cold storage of vaccines
That barely scratches the surface of the thing.
Charles Kettering, vice president of General Motors Research Corporation, was seeking a refrigerant replacement that would be colorless, odorless, tasteless, nontoxic, and nonflammable.
Dichlorodifluoromethane [wikipedia.org]
The refrigerant of choice for the 19th century ice machine was ammonia, which has the drawbacks of being highly toxic, corrosive, and difficult to compress. The net result is that the ice machines were massive (as big as a typical kitchen), steam powered (the best source of energy in the 19th century for large equipment. needing constant boiler attendance), required a lot of maintenance and were the source of industrial accidents.
Sulfur dioxide is compressed readily and has a good latent heat of 25 kJ/mol. Chemists and physicists were able to put a kitchen sized version of the refrigerator on the market after World War One. Unfortunately, sulfur dioxide isn't the most pleasant refrigerant: Early refrigerators leaked and if they didn't, sulfur dioxide is corrosive, so they soon would.
Dichlorodifluoromethane [wou.edu]
The first refrigerator to see widespread use was the General Electric "Monitor-Top" refrigerator introduced in 1927, so-called because of its resemblance to the gun turret on the ironclad warship USS Monitor of the 1860s.
As the refrigerating medium, these refrigerators used either sulfur dioxide, which is corrosive to the eyes and may cause loss of vision, painful skin burns and lesions, or methyl formate, which is highly flammable, harmful to the eyes, and toxic if inhaled or ingested.
Refrigerator [wikipedia.org]
"Refrigerator Day is the Dinosaurs analogue to Christmas and the titular celebration...Refrigerator Day, or Fridge Day for short, celebrates the development of the greatest boon to modern dinosaur, the refrigerator. Thanks to the development of this magical cold box, dinosaurs could store food and no longer had to continually roam, and thus were able to settle down and start families. Fridge Day is traditionally marked with gift-giving, a pageant recalling the first Refrigerator Day, festive decorations, a Fridge Day bonus, and jolly Refrigerator Day carols. Muppet Wiki - Refrigerator Day [wikia.com]
Henson was on to something here.
I don't think the geek has any clear picture of what life was like before modern refrigeration and air conditioning.
The ideal refrigerant would have favorable thermodynamic properties, be noncorrosive to mechanical components, and be safe, including free from toxicity and flammability. It would not cause ozone depletion or climate change.
Refrigerant [wikipedia.org]
That ideal refrigerant doesn't exist in 2015 ---
but if you look honestly at the problem from the point of view of someone living in 1935, Freon comes pretty damn close.
Mercury not poisonous in teeth (Score:2)
Everyone knows that mercury is poisonous. Pregnant women are told to avoid larger fish because of the higher mercury concentrations (from eating smaller fish). People freak out when they break a CFC (which contains less mercury than a can of tuna) and spend inordinates amount of money to clean it up.
But then when people to go to the dentist with cavities, what do they do? Fill them with a gold and silver amalgam dissolved in MERCURY. They tell you that it all evaporates away quickly, but it doesn’
There are oblivious and dangerous people - I was (Score:2)
I knew a man like this - a boss of mine at a summer job - who was oblivious to safety concerns whether that meant ancient gas stoves he cavalierly over-rode the safety valves on, canoes, or anything else (he was an avid tinkerer and jerry-rigger, but in his case not truly inventive.) He was more than a bit of a bully in everything, and felt certain he could bully nature, too. I left that summer job glad to still have my skin (after one very close call in one of his boats.) Just a couple years later I read t
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Where is the evidence that he was trying to make dangerous products?
The common wisdom of the time, was the atmosphere was large enough and the biosphere diverse enough to clear up any toxins, and what men can do would only be a small effect.
This idea was wrong, but it took a lot of science to show this effect.
But if you want to vilify people for being part of their time... How much carbon are we polluting as part of these trivial posts?
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RTFA! He knew the stuff was dreadfully toxic and hushed it up so it could remain in production.
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And almost 100 years later, we've got knuckleheads today saying exactly the same thing.
http://news.heartland.org/news... [heartland.org]
Re:JUSTICE (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:JUSTICE (Score:5, Insightful)
I wouldn't exactly call it justice when the organism arguably responsible for the most environmental damage ever seen on the planet died because he screwed up and accidentally strangled himself.
Yea, but the question is, did he know any of that at the time those inventions were made?
Did he have reason to know?
If not, then you can't blame him for them, plenty of things were invented that way and then changed in the future. Lead paint is another example off the top of my head.
Re:JUSTICE (Score:5, Insightful)
From TFA:
In 1924, General Motors was headed for a scandal. Although reports of sickness had been coming out of all three tetraethyl refineries, the story was concealed from the newspapers. But things came to a head at the TEL refinery in Bayway, New Jersey. Dozens of workers contracted lead poisoning from breathing the toxic vapors and became violently insane. Five men died within a short time and news coverage was unavoidable.
Midgley stopped at nothing in trying to convince the public that his antiknock additive was safe. He would pour TEL additive onto his own hands and take deep breaths from the bottle in front of large audiences, all the while insisting that it was harmless and that repeated daily exposure was nothing to worry about. What the public didn’t know was that Midgley had recently spent six weeks in Florida, golfing in the sunshine in an attempt to clear his own lungs of lead particles.
So, he might not have known from the very beginning, but he certainly knew early on and did his best to keep it quiet. That strikes me as knowing and willful.
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Fair enough, I didn't know that since I rarely RTFA...
Then he got what he deserved...
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Lead paint was in use for a very long time, BECAUSE it was known to be toxic.
That's why it was used on ocean going ships and submarines. It kills barnacles.
The toxicity of lead has been known about since at least the roman empire.
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No he was the thing that caused The Great Dying [wikipedia.org] about 250 million years ago.
Re:MTBE (Score:4, Informative)
So I am an environmental consultant who deals with contamination like this. I'm not completely disagreeing with you, but like many things, it's complicated. Here are a few other facts that should be in the discussion about MTBE:
1) The reason MTBE was mandated by the federal gov't (not just CA) was that it did significantly reduce tailpipe emissions, which had a real benefit to human health and air quality. (Now ethanol has replaced MTBE to serve the same function, again by federal mandate)
2) Risks associated with groundwater contamination were not as well understood then as they are now, so we can only place blame on MTBE and the regulators who mandated it with the benefit of hindsight.*
3) MTBE got lots of press, but there are other compounds in gasoline with much higher toxicity and are more persistent in soils and groundwater (benzene, ethylbenzene, naphthalene, and tri-methylbenzenes to give a few examples).
4) The vast majority of MTBE [and gasoline contamination in general] was from leaky, old, poorly constructed/maintained underground tank systems that prior to the mid-90's had little to no regulations or industry standards. By the end of the 90's essentially all registered underground storage tanks across the country were replaced or upgraded to comply with new federal standards to make them much more reliable (like double-walled tanks, leak detection systems, corrosion resistance, maintenance standards, electronic monitoring, and more). The federal mandate to replace MTBE with ethanol came about a decade after the country had upgraded the tank systems, so the actual of risk MTBE contamination to groundwater at that time was very low; most contamination of MTBE had happened many years prior.
5) Since the federal mandate to replace MTBE with ethanol the number of nationwide reported leaks from tank systems has spiked because ethanol, unlike MTBE, is very corrosive and degrades tank systems faster, which goes back to point #3 that there are worse compounds in gasoline to worry about. The silver-lining is the new tanks systems are much better at quickly identifying when a leak occurs, significantly reducing the volume of gasoline leaked before it is corrected.
*- Keep in mind the EPA didn't even exist until 1970 and politicians/laws typically lag 5-10 years behind the science. So, it wasn't until around 1990 that our understanding of contamination and environmental regulations started to have any significant impact on how businesses/polluters operated. Relative to many other STEM fields, environmental science is very young and the changes in our understanding of contamination, risk, and regulations over the past couple decades cannot be understated.
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Sadly, this is the mentality taught to young people nowadays.